|
Twentieth century
Although D. H. Lawrence could be regarded as a writer of
love poems, his usually deal in the less romantic
aspects of love such as sexual frustration or the sex
act itself. Ezra Pound in his Literary Essays complained
of Lawrence's interest in his own "disagreeable
sensations" but praised him for his "low-life
narrative." This is a reference to Lawrence's dialect
poems akin to the Scots poems of Robert Burns, in which
he reproduced the language and concerns of the people of
Nottinghamshire from his youth. He called one collection
of poems Pansies partly for the simple ephemeral nature
of the verse but also a pun on the French word panser,
to dress or bandage a wound. "The Noble Englishman" and
"Don't Look at Me" were removed from the official
edition of Pansies on the grounds of obscenity, which he
felt wounded by.
From the age of 17 Gavin Ewart acquired a reputation for
wit and accomplishment through such works as "Phallus in
Wonderland" and "Poems and Songs", which appeared in
1939 and was his first collection. The intelligence and
casually flamboyant virtuosity with which he framed his
often humorous commentaries on human behaviour made his
work invariably entertaining and interesting. The
irreverent eroticism for which his poetry is noted
resulted in W H Smith's banning of his "The Pleasures of
the Flesh" (1966) from their shops.
Canadian poet John Glassco wrote Squire Hardman (1967),
a long poem in heroic couplets, purporting to be a
reprint of an 18th century poem by George Colman the
Younger, on the theme of flagellation.
Erotic Literature - Erotic fiction
|
